* 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Shelf --*-Ci 7 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



y 



THE FOURTH GOSPEL 



THE QUESTION OF ITS ORIGIN STATED 
AND DISCUSSED 



BV 



JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE 






BOSTON 

GEO. H. ELLIS, 14I FRANKLIN STREET 



1886 



&"&> 



COPYRIGHT, 

BY GEORGE H. ELLIS, 

1886. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH 
GOSPEL. 

The problem of the Fourth Gospel is this ; 
how could a Gospel proceeding from John, one 
of the companions and apostles of Jesus, give a 
view of his character and life differing in many 
ways from that of the other three evangelists ? 
On the other hand, if it was not written by John, 
but by some later author, how could it have been 
universally received in the early Church as gen- 
uine and authentic, and no trace of opposition to 
it be found in all Christendom, from Egypt to 
Gaul ? If it gives us a Gnostic Jesus or an Alex- 
andrian JesuSj and not the Jesus of Palestine, its 
universal reception is all the more unaccount- 
able. 

This is the problem which has been discussed 
in Germany and elsewhere since the time of 
Ferdinand Christian Baur, and is yet an unset- 
tled question. I shall give the arguments on 
both sides, especially those which proceed from 



4 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

such opponents of the Johannine origin of the 
Gospel as Baur himself, John James Tayler and 
Albert Reville ; and, more recently, as they are 
summed up by Holtzmann in his Historical and 
Critical Introduction to the New Testament (Frei- 
burg, 1885), and by Dr. Abbott in the Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica. 

We will first consider the objections to the 
authorship of John, as given some years since 
in the very able work of Mr. Tayler, formerly 
principal of Manchester New College, London. 
This book is called An Attempt to ascertain the 
Character of the Fourth Gospel. But it is not so 
much an examination as an argument. It is a 
fair and honest attempt to disprove the apostolic 
authorship of the Gospel ; and it sums up the 
reasons for rejecting it, as given by Baur and 
others down to 1867. In considering Mr. Tay- 
ler's arguments, we shall know the strongest 
points that could be made against the received 
opinion at the time when Mr. Tayler wrote ; 
and perhaps, even now, there is no one book 
which states and summarizes them so well. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 5 
I. 

Mr. Tayler first describes the evident differ- 
ence between the three Synoptic Gospels and the 
Fourth, as regards the scene of Christ's labors, 
the form of his teachings, the events mentioned, 
and the resulting view of the character of Christ 
himself. He thinks that John's Gospel is not so 
much another as a different Gospel from those 
of the Synoptics. Considering it impossible that 
the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse should 
have been written by the same author, he de- 
cides in favor of the authenticity of the latter. 
The references to the Apostle John in Script- 
ure and ecclesiastical tradition show, in his 
opinion, that John belonged to the Jewish sec- 
tion of the Christian Church, to which, plainly, 
the author of the Fourth Gospel does not be- 
long. The external testimonies to the apos- 
tolic authorship of the Gospel do not begin to 
be satisfactory till toward the end of the sec- 
ond century. The doctrine of the Logos, he 
thinks, could not have been blended so inti- 
mately with Christianity at an early period as it 
appears in this book. In the apologists of the 
second century, indeed, he finds this Logos doc- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

trine fully accepted ; but, in the writings of Paul, 
instead of the " Logos " we have the " Spirit." 
But his chief reason for rejecting the Gospel as 
apostolic is from its position in regard to the 
time of the Last Supper. The three Synoptics 
place it on the fourteenth of Nisan, on the day 
of the Passover; but John puts it on the day 
before, and fixes the crucifixion on the Passover. 
That the Fourth Gospel is wrong here, Mr. Tay- 
ler thinks evident; and that, therefore, it could 
not be written by John, who was incapable of 
such a mistake, and whose authority was ap- 
pealed to in Ephesus in favor of the other date. 
For such reasons as these, he considers himself 
compelled to deny the apostolic authorship of 
the Fourth Gospel. Who was really the writer 
he is unable to say ; but he is convinced that it 
was some one who was living and writing before 
the middle of the second century, — certainly be- 
fore the death of Papias in A.D. 163, and prob- 
ably after A.D. 135. He differs from Dr. Baur, 
who considers it of Alexandrine origin, since he 
regards the uniform tradition of the Church in 
favor of Ephesus conclusive as to the place of its 
composition. 

The Fourth Gospel, therefore, according to 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL J 

Mr. Tayler, " belongs to the primitive age of 
Christianity, and cannot be brought lower than 
the first half of the second century." Never- 
theless, he does not consider it as the work of 
imposture : partly because it does not speak of 
John as its author till the last chapter, which he 
holds to be a later addition ; and, also, because 
the book is really filled with the current of spir- 
itual life which came from Jesus. His work ends 
with an attempt to show that Baron Bunsen was 
wrong in saying that, if John's Gospel is not 
authentic, there can be no historical Christ and 
no Christian Church. On the other hand, Mr. 
Tayler asserts that Christianity is not damaged 
by the results of this criticism, and that we lose 
nothing in discovering that the Fourth Gospel 
was not the work of an apostle, but of an un- 
known writer at Ephesus, in the second century. 
Let us next consider the subsequent history of 
this question, and the present state of opinion 
among the critics of Germany, as given in Holtz- 
mann's recent book (1885). Holtzmann is one 
of the leading theologians of the school of Baur ; 
and, like Mr. Tayler and Reville, he rejects the 
Johannine authorship. We may thus depend on 
his giving full weight to the objections to the 
received opinion. 



8 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

Holtzmann, though admitting that the Fourth 
Gospel has a right to be accepted as a Gospel, 
gives the following reasons for his own view. 

The prologue to John contains the only pas- 
sage in the Gospel which treats of the pre-exist- 
ence and eternal being of Jesus, and differs 
wholly in its tone from the Synoptic Gospels 
(Matthew, Mark, and Luke, — called Synoptic be- 
cause all taking the same view of the course of 
events in the life of Jesus). In John, the his- 
toric element yields to the philosophic and super- 
natural one. New historic facts are introduced, 
such as the words of the Baptist, the conver- 
sations of Jesus with the Jews and his disciples, 
— characters, places, situations, not in the first 
three Gospels. In these, the scene of Christ's 
work is chiefly in Galilee ; in John, it is laid at 
Jerusalem. Various events recorded by the Syn- 
optics are omitted in John, such as the Temp- 
tation, the Sermon on the Mount, the Transfigu- 
ration, and many of the Synoptic miracles, espe- 
cially those relating to demoniacal possession. 
The Synoptics give only one year for the public 
life of Jesus, but John requires more. Moreover, 
the events in the Fourth Gospel are for the sake 
of introducing the conversations, not for their 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 9 

own sake, as in the first three Gospels. Instead 
of popular parables, John's Christ teaches in 
allegories. The teaching of Jesus in the Synop- 
tics bears immediately on earthly life and human 
conduct, that in John on more ideal themes. 
Jesus, in the Synoptics, teaches moral truth ; in 
John, he inculcates faith in himself. In John, all 
is in broad contrast of light and shadow, of good 
and evil, lacking the variety of earthly color 
which is found in the other narratives. Nor in 
John do we find any development in the ideas of 
Jesus, or any trace of growth or of struggle. He 
is perfect from the first. While the Synoptic 
Gospels are a collection of single, scarcely con- 
nected facts, John's is a rounded whole. It is 
filled with an element of spiritual life, scarcely 
to be found in the others. These contrasts are 
so difficult to explain that Holtzmann thinks the 
easiest outlet is to suppose the Fourth Gospel 
not the work of an original apostle, but the fruit 
of a long development of Grecian thought. But 
such is the variety of views still existing among 
the most able critics, that Holtzmann ends by 
declaring the problem of the Fourth Gospel to 
be more and more an open question. 

If those who attack the authenticity of the 



IO THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

Gospel admit this, its defenders must make a 
like admission. The time is past when the fol- 
lowers of Baur could declare that the non-apos- 
tolic authorship of the Gospel was finally and 
forever settled, and when the conservatives could 
pour contempt on every effort to disturb the re- 
ceived tradition. Some via media must be found. 
Those who contend that it is an Alexandrian 
agnostic Gospel, written in order to change the 
faith of the Church, are obliged to meet the in- 
superable difficulty of explaining how such an 
apocryphal Gospel could be received by the 
whole Church as authentic, without a ripple of 
opposition. On the other hand, those who argue 
that the author was an apostle, who wrote in full 
harmony with the other evangelists, must find 
some way to account for the different tone and 
color of this scripture from the others. 

Many of the lesser objections may, no doubt, 
be easily answered. Supposing it to be dictated 
by the aged apostle to his inquiring disciples at 
different times near the close of his life, we can 
understand why much should be omitted with 
which they were already familiar, and some 
things added to supply the deficiencies in exist- 
ing narratives. These additions would largely 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL II 

consist of the incidents and discussions at Jeru- 
salem, omitted by the Synoptics, who were more 
interested in events and practical truths than in 
the profounder topics which would arise in con- 
versation with the rabbis. The remarkable in- 
troduction to the Fourth Gospel may indicate 
that John found around him, in his later days, 
the germs of the future Gnosticism, and met these 
tendencies with a larger gnosis. So far from 
teaching the gnostic doctrine that the " Word," 
"Life," "Light," etc., were separate aeons, ema- 
nations from the unknown abyss of being, he 
asserts that " The Word " was God himself, and 
not a being derived from him. Consequently (as 
Ezra Abbot tells us *), " the Christian Fathers, in 
their contests with the Gnostics, found therein 
an armory of weapons." Hence, the work could 
scarcely have emanated from a gnostic writer, 
as Hilgenfeld and others suppose. 

As the main attack came from the school of 
Baur, so the defence was championed by that of 
Schleiermacher. Holtzmann says : "The de- 
fences of the apostolic origin of the Fourth Gos- 
pel rest mostly on the profound work of Liicke 
(1820-1843) and Bleek (1846). Both were per- 
sonal friends of Schleiermacher. ' The first waves 

* The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, p. 88. 



12 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

of attack broke against the mighty influence of 
this theologian.' Against doubts in detail, he 
maintained the power of the total impression of 
this Gospel, and declared that Christianity is in- 
explicable if we rest it solely on the statements 
of the Synoptics, — an axiom also maintained by 
Neander, Bunsen, and Ewald." 

Holtzmann describes the present state of opin- 
ion as quite unsettled. There are many shades 
of belief, extending from those who hold fast to 
the traditional doctrine — as Godet (1876-1877), 
Keil (1881), Schanz (1885), Westcott (1882), and 
others — to those who derive the contents of the 
book from Philo or the Gnostics, — as Wolf, 
Havet, Reville, and Tayler. Between these ex- 
tremes are many varieties of critical judgment. 
Many admit a subjective element by which the 
thoughts of John are confused in his memory 
with those of his Master. Some maintain that 
most of the Gospel is from John, but that some 
extraneous matter has come in, which may be 
eliminated by the aid of the Synoptics. Others 
— especially Beyschlag (1874), A. Ritschl, B. 
Weiss, and Sanday (1872) — regard the memory 
of John as furnishing the facts, but as freely treat- 
ing this material in an historic ideal narrative. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 1 3 

Karl Hase considers the Gospel to have been 
committed to writing some years after the death 
of the apostle. Ed. Reuss rinds in it a double 
element, and Schenkel considers the apostle's 
recollections as furnishing the basis of the work. 

In closing his review, Holtzmann admits the 
extreme difficulty of coming to any perfectly 
satisfactory opinion. No attempt to reconstruct 
the Gospel on the principle of a purpose in the 
writer has succeeded. If Jesus is represented 
as the divine and supernatural Logos, many 
traits of human weakness and dependence are 
also ascribed to him. That he is made a mani- 
festation of the Logos does not necessarily prove 
his Deity, since Philo {Vita Mosis) regards 
Moses as a manifestation of the Logos. But he 
inclines to the opinion that the question is best 
solved by assuming an ideal and real conjunc- 
tion in the evangel, by which the mystical ele- 
ment may be explained as belonging to the mind 
of the writer, while the stamp of the Synoptic 
history may be found in the rest of the story. 

The question remains in this condition. As 
against the authority of the apostle are the 
differences in the accounts of Jesus as given by 
the Synoptics, and that in the Fourth Gospel ; 



14 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

but, on the other hand, the moment these are 
made of importance enough to damage the apos- 
tolic authorship, the opposite difficulty of ex- 
plaining its general reception in the Church is 
increased. It is incredible that an unknown 
Gospel, presenting itself in the middle of the 
second century, claiming the great apostle as its 
author and giving a new view of Christ, should 
have been received by the whole Church without 
the least opposition. The objections rest on 
internal evidence, for the external evidence is in 
favor of its authenticity. 

One of the most recent, able, and exhaustive 
examinations of the problem of the Fourth Gos- 
pel is to be found in the article by Dr. Edwin 
A. Abbott, head master of the London schools. 
This is in the tenth volume of the last edition 
of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, article "Gos- 
pels." The author belongs to the freest school 
of thinkers, and is in evident sympathy with the 
German and Dutch critics ; but he is too 
thorough a scholar to go all lengths with them 
in their negations. He sees and admits the 
marked differences between the Fourth Gospel 
and the Synoptics, and indicates seventeen points 
where John thus differs from the Gospels of Mat- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 1 5 

thew, Mark, and Luke. He says it has greater 
scope than these, is more artistic and complete, 
is far superior to them in the symmetry of its 
method, gives more of the purely human traits 
of the character of Jesus, and often seems to 
bring him upon the level of pure humanity. It 
destroys the special privilege of pre-existence by 
the words, " Did this man sin, that he was born 
blind?" It is faithful to the spirit rather than 
the letter of the teaching of Jesus, and cares 
little for belief founded on wonders. It repre- 
sents Jesus as always following the intimations 
of a will higher than his own ; makes the signs 
of his coming not outward, but inward ; and, 
when it does not give the exact words of Jesus, 
gives us his thoughts. It makes the essence of 
the resurrection of Jesus spiritual, — a spiritual 
ascent of the soul in accordance with law, like 
the sprouting of a seed. Dr. Abbott remarks 
that the statement of the profound law of the 
increased influence of the dead on the living can 
hardly have proceeded from any other than 
Jesus himself. And, in the last conversations, 
the spiritual depth of the doctrine goes to show 
that we have in them much of the Master's own 
teaching. 



1 6 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

As regards the external evidence, Dr. Abbott 
says that no candid mind can resist the proof 
that some of the apostolic Fathers (Barnabas, 
Hermas, Ignatius) used the Fourth Gospel, and 
that Papias had quoted it before. Hence, he 
concludes that it was derived from John, and 
is, as it professes, a " Gospel according to John." 
But he thinks that it may have been edited by 
a disciple or a successor, and that John's idio- 
syncrasy has colored the language attributed to 
Jesus. But Dr. Abbott gives no support to the 
view that it was an independent composition, 
written in the middle of the second century, with 
the purpose of giving a new view of the charac- 
ter and teaching of Jesus. 

II. 

We ask next, Which ought to have the most 
weight in deciding the question of authorship, — 
the united and unvarying belief of the Church, 
less than two hundred years after the birth of 
Christ, or the arguments of criticism, however 
ingenious, at the present time ? 

To test this, let us suppose a critic, in the 
year A.D. 3500, to be examining the question of 
the authorship of the Paradise Lost, He finds, 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL I J 

we will suppose, few references to it before the 
year 1800 ; but, at that time, it was universally 
attributed to John Milton, an eminent English 
writer of the seventeenth century. Such had 
continued to be the general belief during all 
the subsequent centuries. But this critic, on 
examination, sees much reason for doubting 
this conclusion. "I find," he says, "other 
works, in prose, attributed to this same writer, — 
works of a violent and bitterly controversial 
character, and wholly different in spirit from the 
poem. In these, he is a son of Thunder, ready 
to call down fire from heaven on the heads of 
his opponents : in this, he is patient under neg- 
lect and sorrow. The difference of style also 
is very great. The prose writings have long, 
involved, difficult sentences: the verse is lumi- 
nous, simple, and clear. No person, for exam- 
ple, unbiassed by prejudice, can read the ' Ani- 
madversions on the Remonstrant's Defence 
against Smectymnuus,' and believe the author of 
this bitter, obscure, and prosaic essay and that 
of the Paradise Lost to be the same person. 
Take, for example, the following passage, which 
is a fair specimen of the whole : — 

" ' The peremptory analysis, that you call it, I believe 
will be so hardy as once more to unpin your spruce, fastid- 



1 8 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

ious oratory, to rumple her laces, her frizzles, and her 
bobbins, though she wince and fling never so peevishly. 

" ' Remonst. — Those verbal exceptions are but light 
froth, and will sink alone. 

" ' Ans. — O rare Subtlety, beyond all that Cardan ever 
dreamed of! when will light froth sink? Here, in your 
phrase, the same day that heavy plummets will swim 
alone. Trust this man, readers, if you please, whose 
divinity would reconcile England with Rome, and his phi- 
losophy make friends nature with the chaos, sine ponder e 
habentia pondus. 

"'Remonst. — That scum may be worth taking off, 
which follows. 

" * Ans. — Spare your ladle, sir : it will be as the 
bishop's foot in the broth ; the scum will be found upon 
your own remonstrance. , 

"It is evident," our critic might say, "that 
the man who could write pages of such stuff as 
this could not be the author of Paradise Lost. 
Which of these, then, was John Milton ? An- 
cient writers declare Milton to have been a 
Puritan, a friend and secretary of Cromwell, a 
schoolmaster, the writer of a Latin Dictionary 
and the History of England. When could he 
have written the Paradise Lost? All tradition 
agrees that it was not published till 1667. But 
then he was already fifty-nine years old ; and 
he died seven years after, blind and tormented 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 19 

with the gout. Is it credible that this splendid 
poem could have been composed at such a time 
of life and under such circumstances by one 
who had given all his mature years to politics, 
sectarian theology, and Latin dictionaries ? 

" It is true," our thirty-fifth century critic 
might add, "that the scattering notices of this 
poem before the nineteenth century do all attrib- 
ute it to the Puritan John Milton. But it is 
a suspicious circumstance that one of these 
writers, named Johnson (who nourished about 
A.D. 1760), speaks of the ' long obscurity and 
late reception ' of this poem, ' and that it did 
not break into open view ' till the Revolution of 
1688. It is also remarkable that the most emi- 
nent contemporaries of this writer do not speak 
of the poem or know of it. Jeremy Taylor, 
Baxter, Locke, Newton, Leibnitz, all living at 
the same time, are ignorant of the existence of 
Paradise Lost, If such a great poem had then 
been published, is it possible that they should 
not have read it ? It is still more singular that 
the public attention was first called to it forty 
or fifty years after its supposed date by a writer 
of periodical papers, named Addison. Before 
his time, only one eminent man appears to have 



20 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

known of it, and that one another poet, named 
Dryden, who gives it great praise. Now, Dry- 
den was universally admitted to have been a 
genius of the first order, and a celebrated poet ; 
while Milton, as we have seen, was known only 
as a prose writer, and a very prosaic prose writer. 
Milton was incapable of writing the Paradise 
Lost ; for, though some shorter poems seem to 
have been attributed to him, yet the critic 
before referred to (Johnson) says that those who 
pretend to like them ' force their judgment into 
false approbation of these little pieces, and 
prevail on themselves to think that admirable 
which is only singular.' He adds of one that 
' its diction is harsh, its rhymes uncertain, and 
its numbers unpleasing ' ; and of another, ' In 
this poem there is no nature, for there is no 
truth.' If, therefore, Milton wrote the shorter 
poems, he evidently did not write the longer one. 
Youth is the season of poetry. If, in his youth, 
he tried to write poetry, and wrote it so badly, 
is it possible that, old and blind, after spending 
his life in teaching school, making dictionaries, 
and writing bitter theological essays, he could 
suddenly fall heir to the splendid genius which 
irradiates the Paradise Lost? Milton could not 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 21 

have written this poem. But Dryden could. 
And there was very good reason why Dryden 
should conceal the fact ; for he had been a Puri- 
tan, and had become a Catholic. He probably 
wrote the poem before his change of opinion, 
and this accounts for the religious views which 
it contains. He dared not publish it openly 
under his own name, after becoming a Catholic, 
and could not bear to suppress it. Nothing re- 
mained but to publish it under the name of an- 
other ; and he selected that of Milton, the Puri- 
tan, as an obscure man, to whom it might easily 
be attributed. This supposition, and only this, 
accounts for all the facts in the case." 

An ingenious critic can always find such argu- 
ments as these by which to unsettle the authen- 
ticity of any book, no matter how long or how 
universally ascribed to a particular author. But 
which is likely to be right, — the individual critic 
or the universal opinion ? Shall we trust the 
common belief of a period near enough to have 
the means of knowing the truth, yet distant 
enough to have had time to gather up all the 
threads of evidence, or the reasonings and 
judgment of a man living ten or fifteen centuries 
after ? 



22 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

Mr. Tayler himself says, "With Irenaeus and 
Tertullian, who mark the transition from the 
second to the third century, the testimony to the 
apostolic origin and authority of the Fourth 
Gospel becomes so clear, express, and full, and 
the verdict of the Catholic Church respecting it 
so decisive, that it is quite unnecessary to pursue 
the line of witnesses any farther." Now, Mr. 
Tayler supposes it to have been forged or in- 
vented after A.D. 135. In less than sixty-five 
years, then, this false book is universally re- 
ceived as the work of a great apostle who could 
hardly have been dead fifty years when the 
Gospel was written, and not a hundred when it 
was thus universally received as his. Wesley 
has been dead just about as long as the Apostle 
John had been dead when the Fourth Gospel 
was universally ascribed to him. Who can 
think that a work on religion, essentially differ- 
ing from Wesley's other teachings, could have 
been forged a few years after his death, and be 
now universally accepted in all the Methodist 
churches of Europe and America as his authen- 
tic writing ? Yet this is what we are invited to 
believe concerning the Fourth Gospel. 

In deciding such questions, too much weight 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 23 

is given to the function of criticism, which only 
judges by the letter. The critical faculty in man 
is an important one, certainly ; but as certainly 
gives us no knowledge of God or man, of spirit 
or matter, of law or love. All it can do is to 
"peep and botanize"; take to pieces the living 
flower, in order to see how many stamens it has ; 
" murder, to dissect." All the large movements 
of man's soul are above its reach. It gropes in 
the dark, like a mole. A single new experience, 
one inspired impulse, will set aside its most care- 
fully built up array of evidence. It can judge 
of the future only by the past, — and usually by 
a very narrow past, — and so is very apt to be 
deceived. 

The French proverb says, " On peut etre plus 
fin qu'un autre, mais pas plus fin que tous les 
autres." We may believe that our critics in 
the nineteenth century are very acute ; but do 
they know more about John and his writings 
than all the Christian churches in the third 
century together? Possibly there may have 
been some critical persons there too, and with 
better means of knowledge than we have. There 
were Christians then who had the power of trying 
spirits, to see whether they were of God or not; 



24 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

who could tell if a new Gospel, which was no 
Gospel, was handed to them, giving an account 
of their Master wholly different from that which 
they had been taught by apostolic tradition. 
According to the critics there was not in all the 
churches, in the second century, a single man 
who could look this false John in the face, and 
tear off his mask, saying, " Jesus I know, Paul 
I know, Matthew and Mark and Luke I know ; 
but who are you ? " But there were men in the 
churches then, as well as before and after, who 
had been taught acuteness in the keen discus- 
sions of the Jewish and Greek schools, whose 
wits had been sharpened by rabbinical debates, 
and who were quite able to see the difference 
between the Jesus of Luke and the Christ of 
John. Why, then, was not a single voice raised, 
in all the churches, against this intruder? The 
only possible answer is that he came with such 
guarantees of his character as silenced all ques- 
tion. Holtzmann's book contains a full discus- 
sion of the whole question. All that bears on 
the authority and authorship of the Fourth Gos- 
pel has been brought together, and he 'has not 
found one writer in the first centuries expressing 
any doubt of St. John's being the author of the 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 25 

Fourth Gospel. All that is said is in its favor: 
the only objection is that there is not more. As 
far as external evidence goes, one should, me- 
thinks, be satisfied if it is all one way. But 
critics whose object is to discredit a book or 
writer can find fault very easily. Not that they 
mean to be unfair ; but they are students in the 
school of Baur, and would be more than human 
if they had not caught the habit there of hinting 
a fault and hesitating dislike. 

The external evidence, pro and con, may be 
summed up thus : All that we have, in regard to 
the Fourth Gospel in the first two centuries, is in 
its favor ; and, by the end of the second century, 
the testimony is so full and plain that even 
Tubingen critics must admit it to be satisfactory. 
When one complained that he had not time 
enough, the reply was not unreasonable, — that 
he had "all the time there was." To those who 
want more evidence of the authenticity of the 
Fourth Gospel, we may in like manner reply that 
" all the evidence there is, is on that side." 

The unanimity of the churches at the end of 
the second century, in receiving this Gospel as 
the work of the apostle, is such an inexplicable 
fact, supposing it to have been forged, that the 



26 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

defenders of this hypothesis are obliged to take 
the position that Christians were then so uncrit- 
ical that they were willing to accept as authentic 
any writing which seemed edifying, without ex- 
amination or evidence. But this is a mere as- 
sumption, contradicted by the facts of the case. 
Luke, in the preface to his Gospel, already as- 
sumes the critical position, though he criticises 
and denies for the sake of affirming. He rejects 
the false, in order to retain the true. He tells 
us that, since so many were undertaking to relate 
the apostolic traditions concerning Jesus, he 
wrote his Gospel from very accurate knowledge 
and the best opportunities, so that Theophilus 
might have "certainty" (ao^aXemv) in his belief. 
His object was a critical one, — to separate the 
uncertain and doubtful accounts of Jesus from 
those well-ascertained and verified. This does 
not look as if there was no critical judgment in 
the Church. 

We know, moreover, that many apocryphal 
and doubtful Gospels were in circulation at the 
beginning. They were not hostile to Christ. 
They err in the opposite direction. They are 
zealous to exalt him to the utmost, — to heap 
miracle on miracle ; to paint the lily, and add a 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 27 

perfume to the violet. Why, then, were they 
rejected ? Love for Christ might have retained 
them, but the sense of truth rejected them. If, 
as is assumed, the critical faculty at first was 
absent, and only blind feeling existed, why were 
all these well-meant but spurious narratives ex- 
cluded, one after the other, from the received 
Scriptures ? What has become of the " Gospel of 
the Infancy," ascribed to the Apostle Thomas ; 
the " Protoevangelium," ascribed to James, 
brother of the Lord ; the " Gospel of the Nativ- 
ity of Maty," " the Gospel of Nicodemus," and 
especially the " Gospel to the Hebrews," which 
once had high authority ? The sense of truth in 
the churches rejected them, one by one, — that 
spirit of truth which was just as much an element 
of primitive Christianity as the spirit of love ; 
the spirit of truth which Jesus promised should 
be given his disciples, and which should " take 
of his, and show to them." 

Eusebius, writing about the year 325, gives an 
account of the New Testament canon, distin- 
guishing between the books universally received, 
those received by some and rejected by others, 
and those generally rejected. This threefold 
division of accepted, disputed, and spurious cer- 



28 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

tainly shows that the churches in his time had a 
critical sense in full operation. But, before his 
time, three eminent writers, all of whom accept 
as unquestioned the Gospel of John, had shown 
an active and acute spirit of investigation. The 
first is Irenaeus, disciple of Polycarp, Bishop of 
Lyons (A.D. 177-202), whom Hase calls "a 
clear-minded, thoughtful man, of philosophic 
culture, who opposed the Gnostic speculations 
with the help of reminiscences taken from his 
youth, which came in contact with the apostolic 
age." His testimony to John, the apostle, as 
author of the Fourth Gospel, the critics admit to 
be positive and unquestionable. So is that of 
Tertullian, one of the greatest thinkers and 
writers in the Church, first a heathen orator and 
lawyer in Rome (about A.D. 190), whose fiery 
African nature was joined with the acutest intel- 
lect of his time. And, thirdly, Origen (born A.D. 
185), learned in all the knowledge of the Alex- 
andrian school, an independent thinker and stu- 
dent. He says that the Gospels of Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John, are the " only undisputed 
ones in the whole Church of God throughout the 
world." Origen examines critically all the books 
of the New Testament, marks the difference of 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 29 

style between the Epistle to the Hebrews and 
the undisputed writings of the Apostle Paul, and 
says of it that "who really wrote it God only 
knows." 

By the whole Church, then, including all its 
great thinkers and writers, at the end of the sec- 
ond century, the authenticity of the Gospel of 
John is undisputed. Also before that time, as 
far as it is mentioned at all, it is equally undis- 
puted, the only question being why it was not 
more often mentioned. But the apostolic Fathers 
were not in the habit of quoting the New Testa- 
ment writers by name or as authority, — they were 
too near to their own time, — so that their silence 
is no argument against their belief in the authen- 
ticity of the Gospel. 

The external evidence, therefore, concerning 
the Fourth Gospel, may be thus summed up : — 

1. According to Dr. Edwin A. Abbott (Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica), Papias and the apostolic 
Fathers quoted and used it. 

2. Every Christian writer, in the first three 
centuries, who has given the name of its author, 
has attributed it to the Apostle John. 

3. The great writers and critics at the end of 
the second and beginning of the third century — 



30 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement, Origen, and after- 
ward Eusebius, who carefully divide the Script- 
ures into " undoubted, doubtful, and spurious " — 
all put this Gospel among the undoubted apos- 
tolic writings. 

4. No serious opposition to the authenticity of 
this Gospel has arisen until the present time, and 
among a special class of critics ; while others 
(like Liicke, Godet, Keil, Ewald, De Wette, and 
Teschendorf) equally acute and free, say that, in 
regard to external evidence, this Gospel " stands, 
not in a worse, but in a better position than 
either the first three Gospels or the writings of 
Paul." * 

We may therefore conclude that, were it not 
for the objections brought against the contents 
of the Fourth Gospel, no such doubts of its au- 
thenticity would have arisen as now prevail 
among some learned and candid writers. 

Let us therefore examine more carefully the 
nature of the objections brought on internal 
grounds. 

*De Wette, Introduction, etc., § 109. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 3 1 

III. 

The internal evidence against the authenticity 
of the Fourth Gospel may be distributed under 
three heads : i. Its difference from the three Syn- 
optics ; 2. Its difference from the Apocalypse ; 
3. Its difference from the writings of Paul. 

We begin with the most important of these. 
The divergence from the first three Gospels re- 
lates to the character of Jesus, the events of his 
life, and its doctrinal teaching. 

The first — and, if correct, conclusive — ob- 
jection against the apostolic origin of the Fourth 
Gospel is this : 7? gives a view of the character of 
Jesus so different from that of the Synoptics as to 
constitute another person. The character of Jesus 
as represented by the Synoptics and that represented 
by John are contradictory to each other. 

M. Albert Reville {Revue des Deux Mondes, liv. 
de Mai i, 1866) thus describes this difference : 
In the first three Gospels, Jesus is a teacher of 
the Truth; but, in the Fourth, he is the Truth 
itself. In the Synoptics, he appears as a man; 
in the Fourth Gospel, as the Word of God. He 
finds in its author a scholar of Philo, who had 
appropriated his Platonic theory of the Word, as 



32 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

the indwelling, unuttered thought of God (Myog 
hdiaOirog), and as the manifested divine reason 
(Xoyog irpocbopiKog). This Word, according to him, 
appeared among men as Jesus of Nazareth, 
and, being essential light, was opposed by the 
darkness. He attracts to himself all men in 
whom the light is supreme, and repels the sons of 
darkness. He calls on all men to believe in 
himself as " the Way, the Truth, and the Life " ; 
as "the True Vine" ; as " the Living Bread which 
came down from heaven " ; as the only open 
" Door "to God; as the " Well-beloved Son, 
dwelling in the bosom of the Father." This, 
says M. Reville, makes an essentially different 
character from the simple country-rabbi of the 
Synoptics. 

Mr. Tayler's view is the same. He says : " In 
the first three Gospels, we have the picture, ex- 
ceedingly vivid and natural, of a great moral and 
religious reformer, cautiously making his way 
through the prejudices and misconceptions of 
his contemporaries, gradually obtaining their con- 
fidence, and changing the direction of their 
hopes. In the Fourth, on the contrary, the un- 
clouded glory of the Son of God shines out com- 
plete from the first, and is sustained undimin- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 33 

ished till the words ' It is finished ' announce 
its withdrawal from earth." 

There is, doubtless, some truth in all this. 
And yet, if we were disposed to take the opposite 
view, and say that John chiefly developed the 
purely human side of Jesus, how much we might 
find to say ! John says nothing of the miracu- 
lous conception, which appears both in Matthew 
and Luke ; nor of his victory over the doctors in 
his childhood ; nor of his defeat of the devil in 
his temptation ; nor of his influence over demons 
and evil spirits ; nor of his power over the ele- 
ments of nature, in commanding the winds and 
waves ; nor of the transfiguration ; nor of his 
cursing the fig-tree ; nor of the shock of nature 
at his death, the miraculous darkness, the rend- 
ing rocks, the dead rising from their graves. 
And, on the other hand, it is the Gospel of John 
which furnishes the most purely human traits 
in the character of Jesus, — which shows him 
weeping at the grave of Lazarus ; which depicts 
him, weary with his journey, sitting by the well ; 
which shows his need of private friendships, in 
his love for Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, and the 
beloved disciple himself ; and his sympathy with 
human cheerfulness, in the water turned to wine. 



34 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

Still there is no doubt that the Gospel of John 
gives a quite different view of Christ from that of 
the Synoptics. The Christ of this is more ideal, 
reflective, spiritual ; the Christ of those, practi- 
cal, direct, and popular. But Hase well says, 
" Since a great, unfathomed character must be 
differently apprehended by those who surround 
him, according to the difference in the observers 
and the measure of each man's mind, it follows 
that John's different view of Jesus proves nothing 
against the authenticity of his Gospel, unless it 
could be shown that a higher unity of these 
diverse views is an impossibility." # 

About twenty-five years after the death of Dr. 
Channing, a meeting was held in Boston to com- 
memorate his character and genius, at which 
speeches were made by different friends of his, 
all of whom had known him intimately and well. 
Yet it was noticed that they gave such different 
descriptions of his character as almost to contra- 
dict each other. Some described him as inac- 
cessible and retiring, others as specially hospita- 
ble and easy of approach ; some denied to him 
imagination and poetry, for which others made a 
peculiar claim ; some, in fine, said that he was 
not a great thinker, while others considered him 

* Hase, Leben Jesu. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 35 

one of the leading intellects of the age. The ex- 
planation was that they saw him on different 
sides of his character. 

But the most complete parallel to the diver- 
gences between the evangelists is to be found in 
the widely opposite view of Socrates, as given by 
Xenophon and Plato. The first represents him 
as a moral teacher, inculcating self-control, tem- 
perance, piety, duty to parents, brotherly love, 
friendship, diligence, benevolence, and expressly 
avoiding all ideal themes, as transcending the 
limits of human knowledge. He was eminently 
a practical man, as thus described in the Mem- 
orabilia. But, according to Plato, his whole 
life was passed in speculative inquiries into the 
essences of things and in transcendental discus- 
sions. And, nevertheless, Mr. Grote and other 
eminent writers consider both accounts authentic 
and genuine. Mr. Grote says : # " We find, to our 
great satisfaction, that the pictures given by 
Plato and Xenophon of their common master 
are, in the main, accordant ; differing only as 
drawn from the same original by two authors rad- 
ically differing in spirit and character. Xenophon, 
the man of action, brings out at length those con- 
versations of Socrates which had a bearing on prac- 

* History of Greece, chap, lxviii. 



36 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

tical conduct, and were calculated to correct vice 
or infirmity in particular individuals. . . . Plato 
leaves out the practical, and consecrates himself to 
the theoretical Socrates, whom he divests in part of 
his identity, in order to enroll him as chief 
speaker in certain larger theoretical views of his 
own. The two pictures, therefore, do not contradict 
each other, but mutually supply each other's defects, 
and admit of being blended into one consistent whole. 
And, respecting the method of Socrates, as well 
as the effect of that method on the minds of the 
hearers, both Xenophon and Plato are witnesses 
substantially in union ; though, here again, the 
latter has made the method his own, worked it 
out on a scale of enlargement and perfection, 
and given it a permanence it could never have 
derived from its original author, who talked and 
never wrote. It is fortunate that our two main 
witnesses about him, both speaking from personal 
knowledge, agree to so great an extent." 

We have italicized the passages which illus- 
trate our present point. As Xenophon and 
Plato to Socrates, so were the Synoptics and 
John to Christ. Their two portraits of Jesus 
" differ only as drawn from the same original 
by two authors radically differing in spirit and 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 37 

character." The Synoptics, men of action, 
bring out those sayings of Jesus " which had 
a bearing on practical conduct." John "leaves 
out the practical, and consecrates himself to the 
theoretical " Jesus. " The two pictures, there- 
fore, do not contradict each other, but mutually 
supply each other's defects." 

Have we not also reason to say of Jesus, as 
Mr. Grote says of Socrates, " It is fortunate that 
our two main witnesses about him, both speak- 
ing from personal knowledge, agree to so great 
an extent " ? Let us see how much the four 
Gospels have in common. John agrees with 
the Synoptics in regard to the ministry of John 
the Baptist as a preparation for that of Jesus ; 
the baptism of Jesus by him ; the casting of the 
Baptist into prison, and subsequent return of 
Jesus into Galilee ; the healing of the centurion's 
servant ; the feeding of the five thousand ; the 
walking on the sea ; Peter's profession of faith ; 
the anointing by Mary ; the entry of Christ into 
Jerusalem at the last Passover; the fact of 
the cleansing of the Temple ; the fact of the 
supper ; the fall of Peter foretold by Jesus ; 
Gethsemane ; the betrayal by Judas ; the exami- 
nation before the high priest; the denial by 



38 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

Peter ; the examination by Pilate ; the accusa- 
tion and condemnation ; the abuse by the sol- 
diers ; the crucifixion ; the burial ; the resurrec- 
tion ; the appearances in Jerusalem. 

Moreover, passages occur in the Synoptics, in 
exact harmony with those in John, in which 
Jesus is represented not merely as a teacher of 
Truth, but as himself the Truth and Life. What 
is there in John more striking of this kind than 
the passage in Matthew (xi., 28), "Come unto me, 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest " ; or the preceding passage, 
" No man knows who the Son is but the Father, 
or who the Father is but the Son, and he to 
whom the Son shall reveal him " ? What vaster 
claim is there in John than that in Matthew 
(xxviii., 18), "All power is given to me in 
heaven and earth " ; or the picture of himself 
(Matt, xxv., 31) as the future judge of all the 
nations of the world, accompanied by the angels ? 
And, on the other hand, John's Gospel asserts, 
as fully as those of the Synoptics, the human 
limitations and dependence of Jesus. When ac- 
cused of arrogating to himself the name of God, 
he claims only that of a son, appealing with 
entire humility to the Old Testament use of Ian- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 39 

guage (John xvi., 33-36). He ascribes exclusive 
honor to the Father only (John vii., 18), and pro- 
fesses to do nothing of himself (John v., 30). 

IV. 

Passing from the picture of the character of 
Jesus to the story of events in his career, we 
first encounter this fact : The Synoptics place 
all the first part of the life of Jesus in Galilee, 
and say nothing of his going to Jerusalem before 
the last Passover. John, on the other hand, 
mentions several visits to Jerusalem, at different 
festivals. But it is in the highest degree proba- 
ble that Jesus complied with the national cus- 
tom in going to the feasts ; and that he took 
occasion, while there, to talk with the leaders of 
different parties, and test their state of mind 
in respect to his mission. He went only as a 
private man on each of these occasions, as is 
stated in regard to one of them (John vii., 10, 

ov (paveptic, a/jJ ug kv Kpynrti, — " not publicly, but as 

it were privately "). In accordance with this, he 
avoided working miracles ; or, if he could not 
refuse the suppliant, he adopted some method 
by which he withdrew from observation. This 
we suppose to have been his reason for anoint- 



40 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

ing the eyes of the blind man with clay, and 
telling him to wash in the pool of Siloam. The 
man did not discover that he was healed till he 
had gone and washed off the clay (John ix., 1-7). 
So, in the healing of the impotent man, Jesus 
avoided publicity (John v., 13). He spoke of 
himself to the Jews as being sent by God, and 
speaking what was given him to say ; but he 
nowhere openly claimed to be the Messiah. He 
spoke of the Messiah frequently under the title 
of " the Son/' and described his qualities ; but 
he refused the request of his brethren, that he 
should "show himself to the world" (John vii., 
3-6), on the ground that his time had not yet 
come. This invitation indicates plainly that he 
did not appear as publicly in Jerusalem as in 
Galilee. The Synoptics, therefore, describing 
only his public life, and perhaps not having 
gone with him to Jerusalem on these visits, say 
nothing of them ; but John speaks of them, 
because of the conversations which took place 
there. It is probable that, meeting at the feast 
men of a deeper insight and higher culture than 
in Galilee, Jesus spoke to them more plainly 
of his idea of the Messiah; and these are the 
conversations which John narrates. Questions 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 41 

constantly arose as to whether he were the 
Christ or not, but Jesus himself delayed any 
claim to that title. Undoubtedly, he asserts a 
great mission : He is the light of the world. He 
is from above. If any man thirst, let him come 
to him and drink. His day was seen by Abra- 
ham : therefore, he existed in the divine purpose 
before Abraham. But still he would not say 
plainly that he was the Christ (John x., 24). 
His sheep would know his voice, without any 
such claim. 

This, we think, sufficiently explains the silence 
of the Synoptics in regard to these visits to Jeru- 
salem. Jesus went alone, or with only one or 
two of his disciples, as a private Jew, to the 
national festivals. For this reason, the Synop- 
tics omit mention of them ; but John, who may 
have gone with his Master at these times, found 
sufficient interest in the conversations to record 
them as he was able to remember them. 

A great difficulty is made of the omission, by 
the Synoptics, of any mention of the raising of 
Lazarus. Why they omit it cannot now be 
known. Lazarus and his family were the objects 
of hatred to the authorities at Jerusalem (John 
xii., 10) ; and, living so near to their enemies, 



42 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

it was perhaps not best to call attention to them. 
Perhaps only one or two of the disciples had 
gone with Jesus on this occasion to Bethany; 
and the others, hearing of the miracle from 
those who were there, might not have thought it 
more important than those in their own narra- 
tions. Perhaps — but why multiply suggestions? 
Who can answer such questions? Why does 
Luke alone relate the parables of the Good 
Samaritan, the Pharisee and Publican, and the 
Prodigal Son ? Any explanation is better than 
to suppose this exquisitely natural and touching 
narrative an invention. If nature and truth 
ever put their seal to a story, it is here. The 
little picture of domestic life at Bethany, as it 
appears in Luke (x., 38-42), prepares the way 
for the narrative in John. The characters of 
Martha and Mary are in keeping in both narra- 
tives. The active sister, in Luke's picture, is the 
one who comes first, in John's account, to meet 
Jesus. The one who sat at his feet, in the story 
of Luke, is the sister whose tender gratitude 
violates all utilitarian considerations in the gift 
of ointment, as narrated by all four evangelists. 
But, though Matthew and Mark tell this last 
story, they do not mention the name of Mary, — 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 43 

for the same reason apparently, whatever it was, 
which caused their silence in regard to the rais- 
ing of Lazarus. Martha, again, who in Luke 
(x., 40) was cumbered with much serving, true 
to her active and useful tendencies appears also 
in John (xii., 2) as serving on this other occa- 
sion. All these little traits combine in a perfect 
picture ; and all are in harmony with the story 
of the raising of Lazarus, which, the more it is 
read, seems ever more real. 

The difference between the Synoptics and the 
Fourth Gospel, as regards the last supper, is 
sometimes made a strong reason for denying the 
authenticity of the latter. According to the first 
three Gospels, Jesus eats the Passover with his 
disciples on the regular Jewish festival (14th 
Nisan), and then, after the Paschal supper, in- 
stitutes his own memorial feast. He is cruci- 
fied on the next day (15th Nisan), Friday; and 
the bodies are taken down immediately, so as 
not to interfere with the Sabbath. Jesus lies in 
his grave on Saturday (the Sabbath), and rises 
on Sunday, the first day of the week. 

But, according to John, the supper (identified 
by the sop given to Judas [xiii., 26] and the 
prediction concerning the cock to Peter [xiii., 



44 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

38]) was the previous day (13th Nisan) : since 
John speaks of it as "before the feast of the 
Passover " (xiii., 1) \ since Judas goes out, as 
was thought, " to buy the things needed for the 
feast " (xiii., 29) ; since, on the next day, the 
Jews were still to eat the Passover (xviii., 28) ; 
and since it was the preparation for it (xix., 

i4 ? 3 1 )- 
There is one method, however, of explaining 

this difficulty, which perhaps has never been 
fully presented, and which we submit for the 
consideration of our readers. John has been 
supposed to have written his Gospel when he 
was quite an old man, about A.D. 80 or 90. We 
must not think of him as composing it in the 
way men write purely literary works, — as one 
connected whole. He wrote it, or, more prob- 
ably, dictated it, as he was able, in fragments 
and parts. From time to time, he wrote down 
or dictated some particular passage of his Mas- 
ter's life or some special conversation. After- 
ward, they were put together in the best way 
either by himself or by some one else after his 
death. There are many indications of this frag- 
mentary manner of composition in the Gospel 
itself. There is no natural connection in the 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 45 

narrative. Often, an artificial connection is sup- 
plied, as though the amanuensis had asked the 
apostle, " When did this happen ? " and he had 
replied, "That happened the next day" (John i., 
29), "this was the next day after" (i., 35), "and 
this, I recollect, was the day after that " (i., 43). 
"It took about two days to go to Galilee, so 
this must have been on the third day" (ii., 1). 
The amanuensis may be supposed to have asked, 
" How long did he stay there ? " and been an- 
swered, "Not many days " (ii., 12). The whole 
impression given in reading the Gospel is as if 
the aged apostle had been surrounded by a 
group of younger Christians, who asked him 
questions about his recollections of Jesus, and 
wrote down his answers. " Tell us," they would 
say, " about Nicodemus" ; or " Tell us of the 
Christ's conversation at the last supper " ; or 
" Tell us all you can remember of his conversa- 
tions with the Jews at the feasts." So, when he 
told them about Jesus washing his disciples' feet, 
they probably asked, " When was this ? " and he 
answered, " Before the feast of the Passover." 
But, in arranging the different papers on which 
were written down these conversations and inci- 
dents, they may have sometimes misplaced them. 



46 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

Let us suppose the Gospel to be printed 
as a collection of separate reminiscences, and 
not a continuous whole ; and, instead of being 
divided into chapters and verses, to be num- 
bered Recollections i, 2, 3, which the reader is 
at liberty to arrange as he pleases, — what will be 
the result as to the supper ? 

First, it would appear that the whole passage 
contained in John xiii. and John xiv. (with an 
exception to be noticed presently) is an account, 
not of the Paschal feast at which the supper was 
instituted ; but, as Lightfoot and others have sup- 
posed, of a supper which Jesus and his apostles 
took in company a day or two before. This 
would account for the introductory phrase, " Be- 
fore the feast of the Passover," and for the clos- 
ing summons, otherwise inexplicable, " Arise ; 
let us go hence." 

All readers have doubtless been struck with 
this last sentence. Why did Jesus say, " Arise ; 
let us go hence," and then go on with a long 
series of remarks, extending through sixty verses, 
and closing with the prayer in chap. xvii. ? If 
he arose to go, and then changed his mind, why 
did John record at all the proposal to leave the 
room at that moment, which thus became insig- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 47 

nificant ? The simple and natural explanation 
is that they did leave the room, and close the 
conversation then ; and what follows in the next 
three chapters is the recollection of another con- 
versation at another time, not sufficiently distin- 
guished by the compiler of these Johannine 
fragments. This second conversation (chaps. 
xv., xvi., xvii.) probably belongs to the institu- 
tion of the supper, and is a supplement to the 
account of that transaction as told by the Synop- 
tics. Its opening words, " I am the true vine," 
connect themselves naturally with the words 
(recorded by Matthew and Mark), " I will not 
drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, till the 
day when I drink it new with you in my Father's 
kingdom." For " I am the true vine," etc. 
The "new wine" is thus explained to be the 
new communion, — inward, and not outward, — by 
which Jesus was to be no longer with them as a 
companion and friend, but in them as a life and 
inspiration. The connection is then complete. 
The principal subject of the first conversation, 
introduced by the washing of the feet, was their 
duty to serve and help each other after he was 
gone. The chief topic of the second conversa- 
tion, introduced by the Lord's Supper, was their 



48 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

communion with him and common life in him. 
The only difficulty in this explanation is the 
passage (John xiii., 21-38) containing the ac- 
count of the sop given to Judas, and the predic- 
tion of Peters fall and the cock-crow. These, 
according to the Synoptics, belong to the second 
conversation at the Paschal supper, on Thurs- 
day evening, and, if so, have been misplaced, 
and inserted by mistake here. This mistake was 
probably occasioned by verse 18, in which Jesus 
alluded to his betrayer on the first evening, 
but less distinctly than on the second. On the 
other hand, the passage in Luke (xxii., 24-30) 
seems evidently to belong to the first conversa- 
tion, and to the washing of feet. With this alter- 
ation, the chief difficulty is removed. 

We may say, in fact, that by this change the 
whole difficulty of the chronology of Passion 
Week is removed. For the passage in John 
(xviii., 28) about the Jews not going into the 
judgment-hall lest they should be defiled, "but 
that they might eat the Passover," is explained 
by John xix., 14, which calls this day the " prep- 
aration for the Passover " (compared with verse 
31, which makes it the preparation for the Pas- 
chal Sabbath, which was the great day of the 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 49 

feast ; and also compared with Mark xv., 42, and 
Luke xxiii., 54, " because it was the preparation, 
— that is, the day before the Sabbath"). The 
Jews would not go into Pilate's hall, but not 
because that would prevent them from eating 
the Paschal supper that evening ; for it would 
not have done so. If the Paschal Supper was 
still to be eaten that evening, then the feast had 
not begun ; and going into Pilate's hall would 
not have defiled them. So Lightfoot declares, 
and there can be no higher authority for Hebrew 
usages. "To eat the Passover" (John xviii., 
28) he understands to refer to the feast on the 
second evening of the Paschal season, when, as 
the festival was actually in progress, the Jews 
would have become ceremonially defiled by enter- 
ing the Roman praetorium. 

The difference between the Fourth Gospel and 
the Revelation is so great, say many critics, that, 
if John, the apostle, wrote the one, he could not 
have written the other. To this, we reply : — 

1. The differences are more superficial than 
essential, rather those which touch the form 
than such as affect the substance. Suppose the 
Apocalypse to have been written in the midst 
of the horrors of the first persecutions, when 



SO THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

the writer was comparatively young, and all the 
passionate fire of his heart and imagination was 
thrown into this ecstatic vision ; and that the 
Gospel was dictated thirty years after, when he 
had meditated deeply, and when a long Chris- 
tian experience had purified his soul, — then 
there need not be any such difficulty in suppos- 
ing one man the author of both. The differ- 
ence between them is not so great as between 
Swedenborg's Algebra and his Heaven and Hell; 
his treatise on Docks, Sluices, and Salt-works, and 
the Arcana Ccelestia ; his large folio volumes on 
Mines and Mining and his Apocalypse Revealed. 
Baur himself finds points of contact between the 
Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse, though he 
thinks that the writer of the Gospel purposely 
imitated the latter book.* " It cannot be de- 
nied," says Baur, "that the evangelist wished 
to give his book the authority of the apostle 
who wrote the Apocalypse, and so assumed the 
same intellectual position. There is not merely 
an outward support in the name of the highly 
revered apostle, but there are not wanting many 
internal resemblances between the Gospel and 
the Apocalypse. In fact, one must admire the 
deep genial sympathy and the delicate skill which 

* Baur, Das Christenthum, etc. Tubingen, i860. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 5 1 

the writer has shown in finding in the Apoca- 
lypse elements which could be developed into 
the loftier and larger views of the evangelist. 
He has thus spiritualized the Book of Revela- 
tion into a Gospel. " The amount of which is 
that Baur does not find the Gospel so essen- 
tially different from the Apocalypse as Mr. Tay- 
ler and others do. 

2. But, if we must choose between the Apoca- 
lypse and the Gospel as apostolic writings, every 
thing should lead us to surrender the first. The 
authorship of the Gospel was never doubted by 
antiquity : that of the Apocalypse was. At the 
end of the second century, when the Christian 
scriptures were distributed into those which 
were unquestioned, those which were doubtful, 
and those which were spurious, the Gospel was 
placed in the first division, and the Book of 
Revelation in the second. 

One objection urged against the Fourth Gos- 
pel is its anti-Jewish tone of thought. Granting 
this in the main, we yet find such expressions 
as that used to the Samaritan woman, — "We 
know what we worship ; for salvation is from the 
Jews." But it is thought that, if the apostle 
wrote the Apocalypse, which is strongly Jewish, 



52 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

he could not so soon after have changed his 
tone so entirely. But is the writer of the Apoca- 
lypse so Jewish, when a part of his object is to 
announce judgments on Jerusalem ? And, again, 
why may not John have risen above his Jewish 
tendencies into a universal Christianity, since 
Paul passed through the same change ? It is 
said that, if Jesus had really taught as anti- 
Jewish a gospel as is represented by John, the 
struggle between Paul and his opponents could 
never have taken place. But this is to ignore 
the universal tendency in men and sects to 
notice only that which is in accord with their 
own prejudices. 



We have seen Holtzmann's account of the 
latest opinions on this question. The earlier 
history of belief in regard to this Gospel is as 
follows. It is supposed to be referred to by 
Luke and Mark (De Wette). The apostolic 
Fathers do not refer to it directly, but Eusebius 
tells us that Papias made use of testimonies 
from the First Epistle of John. Papias had 
been a hearer of John in his youth, and was 
an Asiatic bishop in the middle of the second 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 53 

century. Justin Martyr, in the middle of the 
second century; Tatian; and the Clementine 
Homilies contain passages so strikingly like 
those in the Gospel that they appear to have 
been taken from it. # Johannic formulas are 
found in the Gnostic writings, about A.D. 140. 
The first distinct declaration, however, that the 
Apostle John was the author of the Fourth Gos- 
pel comes about A.D. 180, from Theophilus of 
Antioch, who quotes the passage, " In the begin- 
ning was the Word." After this, it is continu- 
ally quoted and referred to by all the great 
writers at the end of the second and beginning 
of the third century, — as Irenaeus, Bishop of 
Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian of 
Carthage, and Origen. None of these scholars 
express any doubt concerning the authorship of 
the Gospel ; and their quotations from it are so 
numerous that, if it were lost, it might almost 
be reconstructed from their writings. 

The first doubts of the authenticity of the Gos- 
pel (unless we consider its rejection by the Alogi 
to be based on critical reasons) are brought for- 
ward in the seventeenth century, in England, by 

*See Ezra Abbot's Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, in which, 
after the most thorough critical inquiry, he concludes that it must have 
been quoted by Justin, and made a part of Tatian' s Diatessaron. 



54 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

some unknown writer, and were refuted by the 
great scholar, Le Clerc. After this there fol- 
lowed a silence of a hundred years, when the 
attack was renewed in 1792 by another Eng- 
lishman, — Evanson. Nothing more was heard 
on the subject; and the replies to these doubts 
seemed to have satisfied all minds, when Bret- 
schneider, in 1820, made another assault in the 
Probabilia. He was replied to by a multitude 
of critics, and afterward retracted his opinion, 
and admitted that his objections had been fully 
answered. # No other opponent to the authen- 
ticity of the Gospel appeared till 1835, when Dr. 
Strauss, in his Life of Jesus, renewed the attack, 
and was answered by Neander, Tholuck, Hase, 
Liicke, and others. Dr. Strauss, moved by these 
replies, retracted his doubts in 1838, but ad- 
vanced them again in 1840.! 

Then arose the famous school of Tubingen, 
from which all the recent attacks on the Gospel 
have been derived. Mr. Tayler and other 
writers, both French and English, who have 
taken the negative side, seem only followers of 
Baur and Zeller. Dr. F. C. Baur, a truly great 
man, began his immense labors with a work on 

* Handbuch der Dogmatik, § 34, note. 

t Reville, Revue des Deux Mondes y May, 1886. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL $$ 

mythology, published in 1824, and continued 
them by several other works, published every 
year, in different departments of ' theology, until 
his death. His vast learning, great industry, 
acute insight, and love of truth make his writings 
very valuable. The integrity of his mind was 
such that, even when carrying on a controversy, 
he seems more like an inquirer than a disputant. 
Even when differing from his conclusions, one 
derives very valuable suggestions from his views. 
One characteristic of the criticism of Baur is 
his doctrine of intention. He ascribes to the 
New Testament writers a special aim, which 
leads them to exaggerate some facts and omit 
or invent others. Everywhere, he seeks for an 
intention, for some private or party purpose 
which colors the narrative, and in the present 
instance ascribes to the writer of the Fourth 
Gospel the deliberate purpose of passing himself 
off as the apostle, in order to impose on the 
Christian Church his doctrine of the Logos. 
This attack roused new defenders of the Gospel, 
among whom the most conspicuous have been 
Ewald and Tischendorf. 

Some critics, who reject the apostolic origin of 
this Gospel, acquit the writer of any purpose of 



$6 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

deceiving his readers. But if we assume, with 
Baur, that the Fourth Gospel is a work of fiction, 
written in the second century, I think we must 
go further, and agree with him that it was in- 
tended to appear as coming from the apostle. 
Else why were so many names of persons and 
places introduced, well known to the readers of 
the other evangelists ? Why were the real facts 
of the life of Jesus so skilfully interwoven in the 
narrative ? Why the assertion in regard to its 
being written by John, " This is the disciple 
who wrote these things, and testifieth of these 
things ; and we know that his testimony is true " ? 
The Fourth Gospel, if not an authentic narrative, 
is the most remarkable and only entirely suc- 
cessful literary imposition on record. It has 
deceived the whole Church for eighteen hundred 
years. 

VI. 

It is a remark of Lord Bacon that "the har- 
mony of a science, supporting each part the 
other, is and ought to be the true and brief con- 
futation and suppression of the smaller sorts of 
objections. " This sagacious observation indi- 
cates another method of deciding this question. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 57 

Of these two views, the one attributing the Gos- 
pel to the Apostle John, the other to an anony- 
mous writer in the middle of the second century, 
— which gives us the most harmonious and con- 
sistent story? Let us look at each opinion in 
reference to this question. 

According to the received opinion of the 
Church, John, the apostle, composed this Gospel 
at Ephesus, in his old age. As years and 
thought and intense religious life changed Swe- 
denborg, the miner and engineer, into the great 
visionary and mystic, so years and thought and 
inward inspiration had changed the Jewish dis- 
ciple, first into a visionary, and later into a mys- 
tic. In his lonely exile at Patmos, his vivid 
imagination had made a series of pictures, rep- 
resenting symbolically the struggle of Christi- 
anity with the Jewish and Roman power, and its 
ultimate triumph. " Every man," says Coleridge, 
"is a Shakspere in his dreams." Day by day, 
these dreams came to John; and he wrote down 
the visions, and they were collected into the 
Book of Revelation. When he returned to ac- 
tive life and the service of the Seven Churches 
of Asia, he came in contact with a new order of 
thought, for which he had a natural affinity. 



$8 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

This was the Platonic and Mystic school of Philo, 
which laid the greatest stress on the distinction 
between the spirit and the letter, between the 
hidden and revealed Deity, and between the 
Logos, or reason of God, and the same light shin- 
ing in the soul of man. Contact with this school 
ripened in the mind of the apostle the mystic 
tendency peculiar to him, — for there is a true 
mysticism as well as a false. The apostle, mysti- 
cal, in the best sense, loved to look on spiritual 
facts as substantial realities. Hence, his fond- 
ness for such expressions as Truth, Life, Light, 
Spirit, and his conception of the Messiah as the 
Son, Well-beloved, and dwelling in the bosom of 
the Father. His recollections of Jesus reposed 
especially on those deeper conversations in which 
his Master's thought took this direction. These 
conversations had been more frequent at Jeru- 
salem, where Jesus had encountered minds of a 
higher culture : therefore, John loved to repeat 
these. Then, in his old age, when the oral tradi- 
tions, which made the staple of apostolic preach- 
ing, had taken form in the Synoptic Gospels, the 
disciples of John begged him to write for them, 
or dictate to them, these other relations concern- 
ing Jesus, with which they had become familiar. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL S9 

So they were repeated, and afterward collected 
in a Gospel "according to John"; and its uni- 
versal reception in the Christian Church by so 
many different schools of thought, as early as 
the middle of the last half of the second cen- 
tury, shows that there could be no doubt of its 
origin. In its essence, it is a true picture of 
Jesus, seen on one side of his life and doctrine. 
Some errors of expression and of collocation of 
passages may have occurred ; and sometimes 
the mind of John himself may have colored the 
teachings of his Master. But in the main it is a 
true picture, not of John only, but also of Christ. 

Let us now look at the other explanation, as 
proposed by Baur, Albert Reville, and others. 

This theory assumes that, while the whole body 
of apostles and early disciples were teaching to 
the churches that view of Jesus and his doctrine 
which finally took form in the first three Gospels, 
another and a wholly different school of opinion 
was being developed in the Church, indepen- 
dently of the apostles. This school was derived 
from the Alexandrian philosophy, and yet grew up 
within the Christian Church. It held firmly to 
the Logos doctrine of Philo, but needed some 
point of contact with the teachings of Christ. 



6o THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

This led an unknown writer, in the first half of 
the second century, to write another Gospel, and 
introduce into it Jesus teaching the doctrines of 
the Alexandrian school. The narrations peculiar 
to this Gospel are held to be inventions, — the 
story of the woman of Samaria, of Nicodemus, of 
the marriage at Cana, of the man born blind, the 
raising of Lazarus, the washing of the disciples' 
feet, the wonderful descriptions of the last days 
of Jesus, of the arrest, trial, crucifixion, and res- 
urrection. The sublime teachings of this Gospel 
are due to this unknown writer : the sayings 
which have helped to change the world were 
pure inventions. Jesus never said, "God is a 
spirit, and those who worship him must worship 
him in spirit and in truth " : our false gospeller 
put it in his mouth. Jesus never uttered the sub- 
lime prayer with his disciples, recorded in the 
seventeenth chapter,— a prayer which has 
touched the hearts of so many generations. 
This also was composed in cold blood, in order 
to make the story more interesting. The tender 
words from the cross, u Woman, behold thy 
son ! " and " Behold thy mother ! " are an unau- 
thorized interpolation in that sacred agony. 
Mary's recognition of her risen Master by the 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 6 1 

tone in which he spoke her name, and the 
" Rabboni ! " with its untranslatable world of 
feeling, — these, too, are the adroit fabrications 
of our apocryphist. And this new Gospel, thus 
invented, is accepted, without a question, doubt, 
or hesitation, in every part of the Christian 
Church. Other books of Scripture they lingered 
over, doubtful of their right to enter the canon. 
But this bold-faced forgery all parties, all sects, 
all schools, all the great theologians and scholars, 
accepted at once, without a question ; and this, 
too, when it was written with the express purpose 
of teaching them what they did not already be- 
lieve, and which was in direct opposition to their 
authentic and received Gospels ! Simply to state 
such a position is to show its weakness. 

VII. 

In the passage John v., 17-47, there seems, at 
first sight, a self-assertion on the part of Jesus 
not in harmony with his calm, impersonal teach- 
ing in the Synoptic Gospels. But, if we look 
below the letter and phrase, we shall find two 
ideas intertwined throughout, both of which are 
fully expressed in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 
One is the conviction that God is his Father, in 



62 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

which conviction he finds pure insight, the sense 
of divine love, and ability to raise mankind into 
spiritual life. The other is the constantly re- 
peated declaration that this knowledge, power, 
and love are continually derived from a higher 
source ; that he can do nothing of himself ; that 
he is a son of God only while depending on the 
Father. He is thus teaching, in another form, 
exactly what we find declared in the Sermon on 
the Mount. Throughout that discourse, Jesus 
speaks with the same irresistible authority of 
conviction. The difference is that in John he 
claims for himself what in Matthew he claims 
for his disciples. He asserts for them that they 
are children of the Father, that they therefore 
can and ought to be filled with his spirit, to 
be perfect as he is perfect, to forgive as he 
forgives. They are the salt of the earth, the 
light of the world. They are to love as God 
loves, and to be a blessing to their enemies as 
well as their friends. And this will come to 
them by living in dependence on their Father in 
heaven, asking and receiving, seeking and find- 
ing. The self-assertion of Jesus in John is no 
greater than when (Matt, xi., 28) he declares his 
power to give rest to all the sorrows of earth, 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 63 

than when (Matt, xxv., 31) he represents himself 
as the judge of mankind, or (Matt, xxviii., 18) as- 
serts that all power is given to him in heaven and 
earth. In all cases, it is the expression of the 
same law, — that entire obedience to divine truth, 
with perfect dependence on the divine will, gives 
to the soul a fulness of insight, power, and love. 
If, then, we see that the central thought in John 
and the Synoptics is the same, we may willingly 
admit that the phraseology in the Fourth Gospel 
is colored by the idiosyncrasy of the writer, and 
does not wholly represent the transparent clear- 
ness of the original expressions of Jesus. Such 
is probably the fact. The thoughts and the life 
of Jesus sank deep into the soul of John, but 
were sometimes reproduced in his ov/n language. 
Some men can remember words more easily than 
ideas ; but, with others, the words pass away 
while the thoughts remain. If the latter was the 
characteristic of our apostle's mind, it will largely 
account for the difference between himself and 
the Synoptics, in regard to their reports of the 
teaching of Christ. The deeper thoughts es- 
caped the apprehension of the latter, but the 
practical teaching of Jesus they have reported ver- 
bally. John gives us the profounder thoughts and 



64 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

loftier visions of his Master's soul, but often 
slightly disguised in terminology of his own. 
He was, like Paul, a faithful minister of the 
spirit, if not of the letter, of the new covenant. 

It may be said, " If we have not the very lan- 
guage of Jesus, how can we know what he himself 
really taught, and what belongs to his reporter ? " 
This difficulty is not so great as it at first appears. 
If we have once become acquainted with the 
mind of Christ, we shall be able to distinguish 
what is in harmony with it. The Gospel cannot 
contradict itself. The merely critical understand- 
ing is like the natural man who receiveth not the 
things of the spirit of God. They are spiritually 
discerned. He who has the spirit of his Master 
judgeth all things. 

This appears to be the doctrine taught by 
Jesus himself in his conversation with Nicode- 
mus. Nicodemus rested his belief in the author- 
ity of Jesus on his wonderful works, on the signs 
and miracles. Jesus refused to be accepted on 
that ground, and declared spiritual insight nec- 
essary, in order to see the kingdom of God. He 
intimates that, by such methods of reasoning 
from outward facts, only an outward and earthly 
Messiah can be inferred. That which is born 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 6$ 

of the flesh is flesh. Jesus spoke to the Jews 
from a profound spiritual insight, and they re- 
ceived not his witness. Except they saw signs 
and wonders, they would not believe. This re- 
fusal by Jesus to accept a belief based on mir- 
acles accords with such sayings in the Synop- 
tics as that " an evil generation seeketh for a 
sign." According to Nicodemus, faith in Jesus 
must rest on his miracles. According to Jesus, 
the miracles must rest on faith. " He did not 
many mighty works there, because of their un- 
belief." Thus, we find, both in John and the 
Synoptics, a revelation of the mind of Christ in 
regard to this point. 

In this conversation with Nicodemus and what 
follows, it has always been found difficult to 
discriminate between the sayings of Jesus and 
that portion which comes from John. The 
method we suggest is the best way of solving 
the problem. Find what part of the passage is 
in harmony with the mind of Christ, and we can- 
not be far wrong. 

The conversation with the woman of Samaria 
carries with it the stamp of reality throughout. 
As, in the Synoptics, Jesus is called " the friend 
of publicans and sinners," so here he appears 



66 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

again as the friend of a sinner. As, in the 
Synoptics, he lays the highest stress on that 
prayer which is not to be seen of man, so here 
he teaches that those who worship must worship 
the Father in spirit and truth. As, in the Synop- 
tics, he is found in kindly and helpful relations 
with Romans and Phoenicians, so here he makes 
himself the friend of a Samaritan. Besides the 
realistic truth of the narrative, we see that its 
substance is in harmony with the mind of Christ. 

The strong affection which Jesus felt for his 
disciples, and his constant habit of identifying 
himself with them, is apparent in the Synoptic 
narratives. " He that receiveth you receiveth 
me ; and he that receiveth me receiveth him 
that sent me." This love reaches its highest ex- 
pression in John, especially in the last conversa- 
tions and in the sublimity of the closing prayer. 
In these final hours, the human affection is 
glorified in an immortal love. " I in them, and 
thou in me, that they may be perfectly one." In 
this, as in other instances, we see that, while the 
fundamental thought is the same in all the evan- 
gelists, it reaches its most profound and elevated 
form in the Fourth Gospel. 

The Fourth Gospel has been claimed as con- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 6j 

taining the strongest proofs of the divinity of 
Jesus. Certainly, the spiritual element in the 
Master is most highly emphasized in this ; but 
it is also certain that his pure humanity and 
absolute dependence on God are also as strongly 
pronounced. It is asserted that the supernatu- 
ral nature of Jesus is plainly taught by John. 
But Dr. Edwin A. Abbott calls attention to the 
fact that this Gospel, even more than the others, 
brings out the purely human element in Jesus; 
as when (John x., 33) he puts his position as 
Son of God by the side of that of the Jewish 
prophets. Dr. Abbott adds that the special privi- 
lege of pre-existence disappears in the words, 
" Did this man sin, or his fathers, that he was 
born blind ? " and says that the works of Jesus 
are represented by John as conformed to un- 
changing law, and not as the result of super- 
natural interposition. 

Our conclusions in regard to the source of the 
Fourth Gospel are, therefore, these : — 

It is very improbable that it should have pro- 
ceeded from a writer in the second century, out- 
side of Christian tradition, and importing into 
it a non-Christian element. Such an apocry- 
phal Gospel would not have been received with- 



68 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

• 

out leaving marked traces of opposition. No 
such traces exist in history. The apocryphal 
Gospels which have come down to us show no 
such creative power, or harmony with the spirit 
of Jesus, as is found in the Fourth Gospel ; and 
their speedy rejection indicates that the Church 
was watchful, and ready to detect any such pre- 
tenders. 

It is also improbable that the Fourth Gospel, 
in the form in which it has come to us, should 
have been written by John himself. Its diver- 
gence from the Synoptics, as pointed out above, 
is evidence of this. 

The traditions concerning Jesus, contained in 
this venerable document, must have come from 
John, since it was received by the churches 
as "the Gospel according to John." But these 
communications, made from time to time to his 
disciples, were perhaps collected after his death, 
and put in shape by one of them, with the pur- 
pose of being used as a support for the high 
spiritual view of Jesus and his teaching, which 
they had received from John's lips during his life. 

Our conclusions as to the contents of the 
Fourth Gospel are as follows : — 

One part of the contents of this work pro- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 69 

duces, in a slightly different form, the Synoptic 
traditions. Some of these have been already 
mentioned. 

Another part of the Gospel gives traditions 
concerning the life and teachings of Jesus not 
contained in the Synoptics. Many of these are 
of great value, giving a larger, deeper, and 
higher view of the character of Jesus than can 
be derived from the other evangelists. John, 
by his spiritual constitution, was able to appro- 
priate and retain some of the loftiest elements 
in the soul of his Master, which escaped the less 
sensitive susceptibilities of his companions. 

Another element in this Gospel is that which 
comes from the mind of John himself. His words 
are often so blended with those of Jesus that the 
only distinguishing test is the analogy of faith, or 
the mind of Christ. What accords with that is 
from him : whatever is discordant belongs to a 
lower source. When particles of iron are mixed 
with sand, if we move them with a magnet, the 
iron adheres to it, and can thus be separated 
from the rest. He who has the mind of Christ, 
he who has become familiar with the spirit of 
the Master, can often attain a like power of dis- 
crimination. 



70 THE PROBLEM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL 

There may finally remain a small residuum, 
coming from the imperfect insight or memory of 
those who reported John's teaching. An exam- 
ple of this is given above, which, if accepted, 
removes the difficulty of the time of the Pass- 
over. 

We do not profess to have reached the final 
solution of this interesting problem, but we 
hope that this essay tends in the direction toward 
such a solution. Space would not allow of stat- 
ing all the arguments against the Johannine ori- 
gin of this Gospel. But we have noticed the 
principal ones, — those based both on external 
and internal grounds. The result of this exami- 
nation has brought us to the belief that no his- 
toric fact of authorship stands on a firmer basis 
than this, and that the long-received opinion of 
the Christian Church is not likely to be essen- 
tially altered. Were it otherwise, it would seem 
to us one of the greatest misfortunes which 
could befall Christianity. The Fourth Gospel 
will be studied more thoroughly and affection- 
ately, not as a perfectly literal transcript of a 
divine revelation, but as full of the highest spir- 
itual life, and as bringing us more closely than 
any other into communion with the inmost mind 
and heart of Jesus. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: June 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



